Who Does the Pope Think He is?

The Pope is clearly the foremost leader of the Christian religion. He, of all people, must be an example of one who can hear God in his conscience and communicate that to his two billion followers. He must be responsible for what he approves because the weight of a third of the world’s population rests on his shoulders.

Who does the Pope think he is in nullifying the death penalty for convicted first-degree murderers?1 Murder is the very crime which the Jews are still cursed for.2 Look at the land God promised to them in Genesis 15:18. It has been a desert.3 for centuries, a home for only poor nomads. Where have the Jews been for the last 2000 years?

So who does the Pope think he is — the Vicar of Christ, Christ’s very representative on Earth? He is nullifying the very remedial action by which the land and all the earth would not be polluted? If men were to live by the natural law and common sense, they would uphold the death penalty.

The mainstream press has continued to promote this policy that goes against natural reason and perverts good sense. Going against what Genesis 9:1-7 says, as well as what Genesis 3:16-19 tells us, goes against the natural reason that God put in the conscience of all men. It is intuitive,4 humane, thinking — an inner guide to save the earth and the world from destruction.5 To go against this inner guide brings defilement to the land and disaster to those nations that abolish the death penalty. In Revelation 22:11, the first category of men are the unjust and the filthy. They are those who go along with the Vicar of Christ and desire to abolish capital punishment. But as the very Messiah of Elohim said while He was on earth in the First Incarnation: “…you know that those who are regarded as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them,”6 and “do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and He is in heaven.”7

So, who does the Pope think he is to command the nations to defy the second covenant of conscience? Not only does the Pope take away the everlasting covenant of Isaiah 24:5-6 and Genesis 9:5-6, he also defies the very words of Christ. He, the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, defies the words Christ spoke by being called Father or Pope.8 He also defies Christ’s words in Mark 10:35-43.

For the church to think that Christ’s words in Matthew 16:18 meant Peter was the person upon whom the entire Church was to be built is a grave error. They must know that that Church has already been prevailed against, destroyed by the gates of hell, and filled with demons.9

If Peter was the first Pope, he was the first Pope to be a married man.10 Moreover, Peter would not allow any man to bow down to him.11 Peter wears no crown. He knew that only if he was faithful would he be crowned.12 For if one wears a crown now, it will surely fade away at Messiah’s coming. Messiah has not yet come, so the crown the Pope wears was not bestowed upon him by Christ. Peter never acted like a Pope, never wrote like a Pope, never owned gold13 or a “Fisherman’s ring” like a Pope, and people did not approach him like a Pope.

The Catholic Church deceitfully tries to absolve themselves of any responsibility in the actual burning of heretics. They claim that the Inquisition was the work of the state, even as Calvin’s adherents claim the state was responsible for the burning of heretics. In a similar way, the Jews try to absolve their responsibility for Messiah’s crucifixion by blaming the Romans. Pope Innocent III said, “We give you a strict command, that by whatever means you can, you destroy all these heresies. You may cause the princes and the people to suppress them with the sword.”

The Pope offered a plenary indulgence to the king and nobles of France for aid in suppressing the Catharist heresy. The penalties were executed by the civil authorities, but only as the secular arm of the Church, like the Jews who cried out for the Roman authorities to “Crucify Him!”

It was the Popes themselves who invented the Inquisition and saw that it was carried out. In 1233, Gregory IX handed over the office of the Inquisition in permanence to the Dominicans, but always to be exercised in the name and by the authority of the Pope. Of the eighty Popes in a line from the 13th century on, not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of the Inquisition. It was the Popes who compelled bishops and priests to condemn the heterodox to torture, to confiscate their goods, to imprison, to put to death, and to enforce the execution of this sentence on the civil authorities under penalty of excommunication.

The Popes themselves, as Vicars of Christ, were the authorities behind the Inquisitions. They wielded the power of life and death, even over emperors. All those murders down through history, carried out by “the woman drunk on the blood of the martyrs,” were commanded and carried out by the authority of the Vicars of Christ Himself. They are still honored with this title today by this Church, who even today are not the least bit sorry for those things. Instead, they admit them now, apologizing for political reasons so they can promote their agenda to unite the world’s monotheistic religions and bring “peace on earth.”

Their motto has been, “It is better for a hundred innocent people to die than for one heretic to go free.” This horrendous doctrine was maintained under every Pope to this day.

Many people today have such a bad taste in their mouths about God, because they relate Him to the God of Christianity who, in their minds, has approved of the countless spilling of blood of millions upon millions of innocent people. The policy of the Catholic Church has been one of support for such slaughter.

The recent apology of Pope John Paul II did nothing to put accountability for these acts where it belongs — on the Popes who approved such actions. This Pope’s stand on capital punishment is a total “about face” from the Church’s record on killing heretics and innocent people. Now he wants the nations themselves to go against the covenant which God established in their conscience: to uphold the death penalty for convicted first-degree murderers. Such hypocrisy exposes the incredible confusion that saturates the leadership of the Christian religion.

“I Wanted to give one person life.”

So spoke Pope John Paul II to Governor Mel Carnahan last year in St. Louis, Missouri. That one person was Darrell Mease, a middle-aged man who was selling illegal drugs to young people. In May 1998, he had decided to get rid of his drug partner, Lloyd Lawrence. He lay in wait for him in a hunting blind with a high-powered hunting rifle. Not only did Lloyd appear, but his wife Frankie and their ten your old grandson Willie, a paraplegic. Sadly, the presence of these other innocent people did not deter Mease, who gunned all three down.

Apprehended, tried, and convicted, this triple murderer was on the verge of being executed until the Pope made his impassioned plea to the Governor. Moved by the personal plea of this very powerful man, Governor Carnahan commuted Mease’s sentence to life imprisonment. While still in St. Louis, on January 27, 1999, the Pope spoke of the meaning of his actions:

“A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of’ human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is cruel and unnecessary.”14

At the time of the Pope’s plea, a spokesman for the Bishop of St. Louis said, “We hope this will lead to a greater appreciation of the Pope’s call that the death penalty is not a solution even in the most horrible of crimes,” Dennis Delaney said.15 The Pope chose to save Darrell Mease’s life not because of some presumed innocence, but incredibly, for just the opposite reason — because he was a convicted murderer. More emphatic opposition to the principles of the death penalty could hardly be imagined. Nor was this an isolated action by the pope:

“It is well-known that Pope John Paul II has personally intervened on numerous occasions to appeal for clemency for individuals sentenced to death.”16

It is ironic and terrible that the highest official in the world’s largest and most powerful religion wants to abolish the death sentence for exactly the opposite reason the Word of God authorizes it: it preserves the dignity of man made in the image of God! This is what the God spoke long ago, right before the nations were separated according to their families and languages:

“And surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.” (Genesis 9:5-6)

Both Pope John Paul II and Governor Mel Carnahan stand guilty before God for the deaths of Lloyd, Frankie, and Willie. They are now as guilty as the man who pulled the trigger, Darrell Mease.

The Twelve Tribes is a confederation of twelve self-governing tribes, composed of self-governing communities. We are disciples of the Son of God whose name in Hebrew is Yahshua. We follow the pattern of the early church in Acts 2:44 and 4:32, truly believing everything that is written in the Old and New Covenants of the Bible, and sharing all things in common.